


The Highblood

by nork



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Meowrails, au where equius actually fights back, i haven't checked this!!, idk????
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-30
Updated: 2016-08-30
Packaged: 2018-08-12 01:43:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7915597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nork/pseuds/nork
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Karkat tells Equius to deal with Gamzee, Nepeta comes along. And Equius finally fights back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Highblood

Nepeta narrows her eyes at you, and you know you won’t win this one.

‘Equius, you don’t get to just push me around!’ she growls, and you relent. ‘Besides, he’s dangerous. The last thing I want is mew getting hurt,’ she says,and gives you a smile.

‘Okay, Nepeta. We do not know where he is, so we must be careful. When we do find him, you will allow me to protect you,’ you tell her, and she nods, obviously eager to begin the hunt.

She grabs your hand and pulls you toward the stairs. ‘Come on, Equius!’ You follow reluctantly.

(God, do you wish she’d stay behind. All you have is bad feelings.)

A loud honk makes you jump. Nepeta is immediately looking in the direction it came furom- you mean from.

‘Purrfect! He’s furry close,’ Nepeta grins. It’s slightly unnerving, and you get the urge to cuddle her close and pap her until she calms.

You do not have the time for that. Instead, you give a single shoosh and pap her cheek, to which she responds to well. She’s calmer.

‘Nepeta, we cannot lose focus. Your instincts might well end you.’ It’s somber, and all she does is nod. The honk comes again, closer, and she tugs you towards it.

Chests pass as you walk through the meteor. You could almost pretend things were normal, only the pair of you didn’t speak.

The silence keeps being broken by honks. You change direction several times.

The floor is slippery, but Nepeta walks smoothly, a hunter in action. You pass a huge beast, dead. The glass jars which once held some of the lusii from your planet are cracked, but the lusii are nowhere to be seen.

Nor is the liquid.

You press on. The corridor darkens, and Nepeta grabs your hand. You try not to squeeze too tightly.

One final jar. It towers over you both. The liquid is green, green as Nepeta’s symbol, as her blood. It contains the highblood’s lusus. A red light glints at you from the top of the jar, and you look upward to see it.

‘Terezi!’ Nepeta says, releasing your hand. She bounds forward, standing in front of the jar, claws waving up at the other troll.

Then, ‘Terezi’ laughs. It’s not a cackle- you're startled.

In that split second, you realise that the troll atop the jar is _not_ Pyrope.

The troll jumps down, something materializing in their hand. The glasses fall off their face and it’s revealed.

Gamzee falls towards Nepeta, club outstretched. She has no time to react as he hits her- hard. Troll bones are not weak, but you hear hers snap like a length-measurer in your too-STRONG arm attachments. One arm goes limp, and she lists to one side. The other arm she slashes across Gamzee’s face, making three diagonal lines.

You’re rooted to the spot. You can’t even move one of your rather spectacular muscles as you watch him hit her again, this time in the ribs. She falls, and she coughs up green.

You stare at the green, tinted and darker through your glasses. Then, back at Gamzee, who is advancing towards you.

‘If you would stop there, highblood,’ you request. It’s feeble, and you’re starting to get furrious- you mean, furious.

‘What are you gonna do about it, peasantblood?’ he asks, and you become enraged. You don’t even reply as you leap towards him. He just grins that sadistic smile, and you begin to hate. Hate with everything you have.

You said you’d protect her.

Yet there you stood, and watched as he beat her down to the ground.

You watch his rich blood slowly trickle down his face, and the rage surges through you once more.

He laughs again, and it sends a shiver up your spine. You feel like you could move again, and you jump to the side as he swings his club down. (Part of you hates yourself just as much as him- why can you move to save yourself, not her?)

Your anger rises, a hot tide washing over you, making your fists clench and your brow furrow. (The unintentional pun makes you even angrier.) You reach up, and pull off your glasses, sending them to the floor. You barely hear them crack as they skitter across the green-splattered floor.

Absently, you wonder just how many glasses of milk you could destroy right at this very moment. Probably quite a few.

He advances again, his steps like inevitable, slow drum beats. You bend your knees, raise your fists. Your lusus did not raise you to be _weak,_ did not raise you to be _beaten_ by someone such as the highblood.

Even if the look on his face makes you want to abscond the fuck out of there, you don’t want to be a coward now.

And as he swings the club, you are ready. You refuse to let him beat you.

* * *

The club comes towards you, whistling through the air. Time feels like it slows, and a fleeting memory of Aradia crosses your thinkpan.

Of course, thinking of your flush-crush takes a moment, and you’re shocked out of it as the club hits you squarely on the shoulder. The club _bends_ , though, and you’re left practically unscathed. You’ll get a nasty blue bruise later.

The club rises again, and the crazed smile is gone from your opponents face. It’s twisted in pure rage, and you remember the moment that he sliced off the Black King with those very same clubs. You glare at him, hateful. You won’t be hit again; you will not stand for it.

The club swings down again, and this time you grab it. For a second, you think it will slip out of your sweaty palms, but you grip it tight. Your fingers punch through the hard plastic, and you rip it from his grip.

He takes a step back as you rise it, this time. However, instead of attacking, you throw it at the ground with all your force. The club snaps with a wrenching sound. The two halves fly away, useless, and there is a new dent in the floor.

He appears to reach into his sylladex, perhaps to grab a new weapon. You know it’ll be pretty impossible, since his sylladex is nothing but a colourful collection of nothing particularly useful, without even considering how difficult it is to navigate.

An empty bottle of Faygo rockets across the room, and hits the wall with a loud crash. You don’t flinch; you’re staring straight at him, trying to gauge his next move. You cure the unpredictability of Bards..

He looks at his sylladex, and you see the flashes on his face, but not the sylladex itself. He snarls at it, and it sounds so odd from him- you’d only known his as a harmless juggalo, albeit a highblood one.

He snaps the ‘dex shut and turns his glare on you. The paint on his face becomes even more terrifying as he wipes some of the trickling blood away, smearing it and making the paint jagged and untidy. He lets out another snarl and takes another drum-beat step toward you.

It echoes in your ears, and the crazed smile comes back.

“I guess we’re fighting hand to hand now, AREN’T WE?” It’s not a question. He jumps forward lightning fast. You raise your arms in an ‘x’ block and trap his fist. You grab the wrist, and lift him high over your head, slamming him into the floor. You lift him again and repeat.

The half-breath as he soars above, you make out the surprised expression on his face. He slams into the floor, making another dent.

He lays there for a moment. By his movements, you don’t think he’ll be up for a while. You reckon a few of his ribs are broken, maybe even a leg. Your lip curls, though, and not even at him. It’s that you’ve inflicted this violence; you never wanted to hurt anyone.

You shut your eyes, and call on the powers at the core of your being. They haven’t been used, barely at all, so they rear inside you, powerful and STRONG. The power of the Void itself fills you, and for a second you’re drunk on it.

And then, you know what to do.

You pick up one of Gamzee’s arms. He looks up, and suddenly you feel a rush of submission. _He should be above you,_ the old part of you says. You tell it to shut it.

“You should have known better than to engage me,” you say. His eyes shut; as if he’s resigned to his fate.

However, as you begin to lift him again, he propels upwards, grabbing your arm. His nails dig into your arms, drawing blue. He laughs, the laugh of someone pushed too far by an outside force. 

You're not entirely sure what he plans to do, but you have an inkling that it won't be pretty. 

Gamzee holds tight, clawing to your upper arm. You move to swat him away, and you feel one of the bones in his hands snap from the blow.

One hand stays on you, and you simply pry the hand off your arm, and hold to his wrist. Part of you cringes as the bone bends in your hands, but you just spin, releasing Gamzee as you spin.

You drop to the floor right after that, to stop your momentum and to watch what happens. As he flies toward the wall, you can’t make out his face, but you assume he is at least scared. The wall rushes to meet him, and you feel your power roiling in your chest, along with your anger.

Whatever happens, the fight is over. You both know that you have won, but the anger continues to dance with the newly found power. You don’t even really know why you called upon it- maybe it thought it could help protect you?

Then, it surprises you. _Something_ changes inside you, and a hole opens up just before Gamzee would impact the wall. It shuts straight after.

And somehow, you know he survived it. You can feel him, strangely. You decide that powers are weird. Nepeta has barely any idea what hers do, either.

Nepeta. You almost forgot about her, and you become scared. The anger calms almost instantaneously, your power settling. You cannot be angry when you face her.

* * *

You step towards her body, realizing there’s a lot less blood than what you thought. Actually, as you think, your fight with him couldn’t have been longer than three minutes.

Still, that’s three minutes of your moirail coughing up her blood, of being in pain. Three minutes to think about how you didn’t protect her.

Guilt washes over you. If the furry- fury- was a tide, then the guilt was a river, full of bubblebeasts and snapbeats. They gnaw at you as you reach her, not caring about if you step into the puddle of blood. It’s out of her, now- there’s not much you can do. You do cringe a little as your striped tights’ knees become stained with olive, but it's a necessary sacrifice. You face her, and your heart sinks at her shut eyes.

“Nepeta. Can you hear me?” you ask. She was coughing blood- the probabilities of her having severe internal injuries soar. Your fear escalates, and you reach out to touch her hand.

It’s still warm; it always is compared to your chilly hands. Her eyes flutter open, unfocused. “Equius?” She asks, her voice quiet and shuddering. You suddenly feel hopeful.

“You’re alive, Nepeta," you say, relief palpable in every syllable. "I need to get you help,” you tell her, and look up and around desperately. Pyrope’s glasses sit on the floor, but you don’t pick them up. Instead, you try to pick up Nepeta, jostling her as little as possible.

She’s as light as a baby musclebeast, in your arms. You stand, without wobbling. That’s for weak trolls- and you, Equius Zahhak- are far from weak.

You cast a final look at where Gamzee had disappeared, and you check with your feeling again. He’s where you left him, in that strange there-but-not-there place. 

You look at Nepeta again, concerned with her eyes shutting. “Nepeta?”

Her eyes open again. “Equius?” You’re vaguely worried that that’s all she’s said, but you can worry about that later, when you’re safe.

“Keep your eyes open, please. That lets me know that you’re still with me,” you say. Your voice is soft, and she gives you a smile.

“Okay. I’ll try,” she says, voice even softer than yours. You look up, swallow hard, and set off in search of the other trolls.

* * *

You reach the group, as two humans float down. You barely glance at them, choosing to walk straight to Karkat.

His eyes grow wide with concern. “Equius? What the fuck happened?” His voice is perhaps a decibel lower than usual, and you’re thankful. You look down at her, as she turns to look at her flush-crush.

“We encountered the highblood. He hurt Nepeta before I could help her, but I have him captive. Alive,” you reply. You don’t meet his eyes. You think he thinks you’re lying, but doesn’t mention it.

“Well, shit. Can we help her?”

Your eyes snap up, frowning. You realize you didn’t pick up your glasses, and he can see your glare. You take a deep breath and try to regulate your anger. 

You don’t want to hurt her. You _cannot_ hurt her. 

“I don’t know,” you hiss. “I brought her to see if you could do anything.”

He inhales quickly.

“Not at this moment. Aradia and Sollux just set us off- we got another injured up here too. When we figure out if we can help them, we’ll save her. I promise, okay?” He says, and you just nod.

* * *

Upon entering the Dreambubbles, you come across two of your god-tiered friends. Feferi’s eyes go very round when she sees Nepeta.

“I have to heal her first!” She protests, pushing against the Eridan. He lets her go, and she comes over to Equius. “Lay her on the floor. I can do this,” she says, and you nod.

You lower Nepeta to the floor, but she still clings to your hand as Feferi leans over, her hand glowing. Nepeta begins to glow too, and she stops wincing in pain.

She stops glowing, and Feferi grins at Equius. “All done!” she says, before fluttering back to Eridan, to heal the carapacian which had appeared.

You didn’t care. You stayed beside your moirail, as she opened her eyes, and they focused on you this time. She grinned, and sat up, wiping the blood from her lips.

She leaps forward and hugs you tightly. You wish you could hug as tightly back, but at the moment you’re paralyzed with happiness and relief.

**Author's Note:**

> idk i started this ages ago and never finished?? and now i have  
> not beta-ed so tell me abt mistakes!!  
> i love meowrails kill me  
> also i suck at fight scenes im sorry


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